1200: Science vs. Religion | Skeptical Sunday

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I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host Michael Regilio.

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Today, we're going to take it easy and just have a little fun episode free of controversy.

Uh, did I get my dates wrong?

I thought we were talking about one of the most hotly debated topics like ever.

Ah, right.

That's not, no, no, you're right.

Uh, my bad.

Today, we're talking into science versus religion.

Is faith the enemy of reason?

Has religion held back progress or guided it?

From Galileo to Darwin to stem cell research and climate denial, We're tracing the long and messy struggle between dogma and discovery.

Whether you're a believer, you're a skeptic, or somewhere in between, we're just going to have a frank discussion today.

We're not here to tiptoe.

We're here to dissect, examine, and provoke thought on the subject of religion and science.

Yeah, well, as Americans, we're actually mostly going to be discussing the issues that affect us.

So this will be more of a Christianity versus science discussion.

I see.

So still one of the oldest intellectual cage matches in history, but let's be clear here.

We're not talking about all Christians.

Many Christians have contributed in deeply impactful ways to scientific discovery.

Okay, good.

I'm glad you clarified that.

Right.

Today, we're mostly focusing on sort of, I guess you would call them fundamentalist Christians and their ongoing disagreement with science.

So forget Tyson versus Holyfield or Ali versus Foreman.

This is Genesis versus geology.

Yeah, miracles versus microscopes.

Divinity versus Darwin.

Yeah, quite literally from the start.

I mean, you've got Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the first humans, according to the Bible, get in the boot for eating from the tree of knowledge.

Not the tree of greed, mind you, not the tree of lust, the tree of knowledge.

So like we said, this is not going to be the case for all Christians and all branches of Christianity.

I'm thinking about my friends here who went to Jesuit universities, for example, and received excellent educations in science and are not young earth creationists or whatever.

Right, for sure.

And we're going to get into that.

But like I said, right now we're going to talk about people that are standing in the way of science and scientific progress.

Many groups have done this over the last 2,000 years, but we live in the United States of America and some portion of the Christian movement here is continuing to fight science.

These are almost entire branches of Christianity that see the Bible as literally true and believe in a seven-day creation and a 6,000-year-old earth.

So for those who are like, what are young earth creationists?

Those are young earth creationists, right?

They believe the earth is actually 6,000 years old based on being created over seven days and then some complicated math kind of thing.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, they think the Bible is literally true.

So it seems appropriate that we point out that if you do believe the Bible is literally literally true, then you believe the original sin was wanting to know stuff.

The Bible basically starts with a warning against critical thinking.

Don't go asking too many questions or you'll end up naked in a bush with a snake.

Most Christians, even fundamentalist Christians of some varieties, might probably disagree with that framing of original sin.

I see what you're doing.

You're playing devil's advocate in defense of Christianity.

I like that.

Yes.

Indeed.

You're right.

They would probably disagree with that.

But they also would disagree with me if I said the earth is more than 6,000 years old, that humans and our primate cousins share a common ancestor.

Yes, I suppose many of them would disagree with those assertions.

My ex-girlfriend, for example, did not believe in evolution and she thought it was totally ridiculous.

And she had a comic, a graphic novel kind of thing that showed how evolution was impossible.

It was

a fun read.

I bet.

I mean, actually, to be honest with you, I've probably read that exact comic book.

They're called tracks very often.

I see.

Yeah.

The fact of the matter is many fundamentalist Christians would also disagree if I I told them that climate change is man-made.

I mean, and a bunch would probably disagree with you there, too.

So what I think we're trying to say is not all Christians, right?

Right.

Many Christians would, but many Christians would say that climate change isn't man-made.

And they might tell me something like that they know this because God made a deal with humans that he would never destroy the earth again after Noah's flood.

Another thing that many Christians believe that never happened.

It just didn't.

Look, Jordan, here's the fact of the matter.

I'm all for being respectful, but part of respect is letting me speak my honest truth.

It's a two-way street, and this is just how I feel.

Okay.

But it's based on scientific research.

It's not just your opinion.

And I think it's just that this stuff gets so tricky when talking about people's deeply held beliefs.

And while I'm not afraid to offend people, I'm also not one of those people who's like, I'm going to offend a bunch of people because I can and then they have to take it.

And I don't know.

I mean, I like my listeners.

They're nice people, even if some of their beliefs are wrong sometimes.

That's all.

I totally hear you, but let's be clear here.

We're not just talking about beliefs.

Fundamentalist Christians have real power in this country.

They help dictate what children are taught.

They help form policy that our government applies to our everyday life.

The entire reason stem cell research has been hampered comes from extreme conservative Christians.

And it's not just stem cells.

The list goes on.

So this is an important discussion.

Yes, and because it's important, let's make it tactful.

My atheist comedian friend, and let's not reserve our finger pointing on these issues only for Christians.

I used to hang out with the Hasidic Jews in college because there was like a group where they always did dinner and stuff.

And well, that's a whole skeptical Sunday on the beliefs that they had that were like kind of insane.

I'll give you a sneak preview.

I wanted to attend a lecture.

There were lectures after the dinners and it was why bad things happen to good people.

And I was like, oh, that should be an interesting philosophical discussion.

And not even kidding, the root takeaway was that you just don't know that they're secretly bad people and maybe they like beat their wife and that's why God gave them cancer.

You just think that they're a good person because you only know one side of them.

And I was like, no, I do not accept.

I do not accept that anybody who had a bad thing happen to them deserved it.

That was like my check please moment for that particular group.

I just couldn't after that.

I was like, nah, can't deal.

Yeah.

And look, there are certain religious people that will use their religious texts to justify beating their wives as well, which would make them good people, I guess.

Look, it's convoluted.

But you are right.

Even back way before the Vatican, before the Inquisition, before Jesus in ancient Athens, the OG birthplace of reason, democracy, and the fatal courtroom drama, the battle of religion versus reason began.

So that's Socrates and company?

Right.

Not exactly a scientist in the modern sense, but a foundational figure for logic, ethics, and, you know, asking questions.

So, asking questions makes you a scientist now?

I'm something of a scientist myself.

I actually try to apply the Socratic method every day on this podcast.

I'll point out that in Athens, people didn't necessarily see Socrates as a truth seeker.

The powerful people of Athens actually saw him as a troublemaker.

He was a nuisance.

He was a gadfly, if you will.

Gadfly.

Haven't heard that one in a minute.

That's basically a hipster insult, I think.

It's kind of a vintage roast at this point in time.

Yeah, I like it.

I think I'm going to start using that one.

Do it, brother.

It's on brand new.

Something of a gadfly.

Anyway, Socrates was put on trial and sentenced to death.

The official charges, corrupting the youth and failing to acknowledge the gods gods of the city.

I confess it's been a little strange to me that people who believe in gods, like plural, that can hit you with lightning or turn you into a pillar of salt, and they're like, we need humans to punish people who badmouth us.

That doesn't really add up for me.

No, nor I, but Socrates challenged traditional beliefs, debated everything from justice to the existence of the gods.

That was dangerous stuff.

He asked probing questions and exposed contradictions in people's thinking.

So that's the Socratic method.

Some say that was the beginning of the scientific method.

Yeah, and they'd kind of be right.

I mean, Socrates basically ran around making powerful people feel dumb.

Nowadays, that's the job of comedians or late-night television hosts.

Which, as it turns out, not great for job security.

See Stephen Colbert.

I was thinking more of the fact that Socrates was poisoned.

But, you know, Stephen Colbert retiring to $250 million or whatever he's worth.

Sure, same thing.

Yeah, well, Socrates was famously found guilty by a jury of 500 Athenians.

Wow.

That's a lot of pissed off people.

It actually kind of sounds a bit like this podcast.

Let's hope not.

No, I've pissed off more than 500 people for sure.

Make a Canada joke?

Wow, you'll never hear the end of it.

Make a joke about literally anything else, not that big of a deal.

But yeah, there's at least 500 pissed-off Canadians who used to, maybe, used to listen to this show.

Oh, yeah, I made a joke online that involved the word Australia in it once, and boy did I hear about it from the Australians.

I bet.

Anyway, you're still alive.

On the other hand, Socrates, not so much.

Yeah.

Well, his punishment, by the way, death by hemlock, which was a toxic cocktail of ancient cancel culture.

And he could have gone into exile, but he refused.

He believed so deeply in rational dialogue and the examined life that he literally died for it.

Plato goes into great detail behind Socrates' reasoning for this decision.

It's in his writing called Cato.

It's an amazing read.

Highly recommend it.

So the trial of Socrates is one of the earliest and most dramatic examples of religious and political authority crushing free thought.

Socrates wasn't preaching atheism, he was just preaching reason.

But that reason still scared people?

Is that, I mean, yeah, exactly.

And if you rewind even further back to the sixth century BCE, we hit the Ionian Enlightenment, a group of thinkers on the coast of modern-day Turkey who dared to ask, what is the world made of?

These were the original natural philosophers, Thales and Aximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras.

Those names don't really roll off the tongue, but those great thinkers laid the groundwork for the fields of physics, astronomy, biology.

I'm probably forgetting something else.

Today, what we would call science, essentially.

And I also saw that episode of Cosmos with Carl Sagan, by the way.

Hey, it's possible I heard of the Iodians without watching Cosmos.

And so had you heard of the Iodians without watching Cosmos?

Of course not.

But because of Carl Sagan, I looked into it and I learned that Thales said everything was made of water.

Anaximenes said air.

Heraclitus said fire.

Okay, they're not all winning ideas, but they were trying.

They used observation, not mythology, logic instead of legend.

They said maybe thunder isn't Zeus throwing a tantrum.

Maybe it's just air pressure.

Okay, that sounds like it might have been a tad controversial back in the day.

Yeah, in fact, the backlash came quickly.

Once their ideas spread, especially into places like Athens, people started pushing back.

Take Anaxagoras.

He said the sun was a fiery rock, not a god.

He was close.

Yeah, well, it took a long time for people to figure out what nuclear fusion was, but he was correct.

It wasn't a chariot being pulled across the sky.

It was a crazy idea.

He was charged with impiety, a capital offense.

Lucky for him, he was able to escape execution by going into exile, but his trial set the tone.

Scientific explanations were threats to divine authority.

Even before Christianity, even before modern organized religion, as we know it, there was already tension between belief systems rooted in the sacred and thinkers asking, okay, fine, but why?

Yeah.

And it only got hotter from there, like burning at the stake hot.

Ah, yes, the Inquisition.

And for the record, when I saw the subject of today's episode, I was expecting the Inquisition.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Well, on the contrary.

Yeah.

Look, their idea of friendly theological debate was more like, you said, what about the stars?

Time to die.

Yeah, Giordano Bruno comes to mind.

One of the original Giordanos, by the way.

But he was an OG space nerd.

Now that I say that out loud, instead of just reading it in a book, is Giordano Jordan, but in Italian?

Because that's kind of cool.

I kind of like it.

I dig it.

You know what?

I don't know, but it looks like they might have the similar root.

Wow.

Let's just call him Jordan from now on.

Jordano Bruden was a 16th century Italian philosopher who believed in cosmic pluralism, the idea that that the universe is infinite with billions of stars and billions of planets orbiting them, all with the potential for life.

So maybe God wasn't just obsessed with those of us here on Earth, yeah?

Yeah, well, that's what he was saying.

And in the 1500s, such wild ideas directly contradicted the religious doctrine.

I mean, not only did Bruno suggest that humanity isn't all that special, he also questioned the centrality of Earth in God's master plan.

Yeah, that's a heresy buffet, I suppose, back then.

Yeah, and the church said, yeah, that's not going to fly and promptly roasted him in 1600.

Yeah, like literally, though, right?

They didn't set up a panel of mediocre comedians to tell jokes about him.

Oh, my God.

Having been to a number of those roasts, I might prefer the burned-at-the-stake version.

The actual burning.

Yeah, okay.

And then, of course, there's Galileo Galilee, the father of modern science.

He dared to suggest that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.

Bold move.

And that, I suppose, no surprise, deeply offensive to the church.

Yeah, they forced him to recant and put him under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

He spent his last years grounded by the Vatican for vehement suspicion of heresy.

That's church speak, I guess, for.

Shut up, nerd.

You know what, though?

Better than being flame-broiled, for sure.

Yeah.

But interesting, Galileo wasn't officially cleared by the church until 1992, when Pope John Paul II formally acknowledged the church's error in condemning him.

So just a measly 359 years of silence and shame there.

Baby steps.

There seems to be a consistent theme here.

Contradict religious scripture and you are in big trouble.

Which is ironic because the guy who came up with the Big Bang theory was in fact a Catholic priest.

That's right.

Famous atheist Christopher Hitchens was fond of making that point.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, in fact, George Lehmet, the Belgian cosmologist.

He came up with what he called the hypothesis of the primeval atom or the cosmic egg.

Sounds delicious.

And he was kind of close, right?

Primeval Adam.

Well, I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

He's a really interesting guy in that he published his works in a little red French publication at the time, and nobody really noticed it.

And then when Edwin Hubble kind of came to the same conclusion, when he noticed that the universe was expanding, and if it was expanding, logic would say that it must have at one time been much, much smaller and closer together.

And Lehmet really was like, it's good, it's all cool.

Like, he didn't really want credit for the fact that he actually kind of revolutionized physics.

But yeah, his idea was he called it the cosmic egg.

And I kind of hope that cosmic eggs aren't at all like space cakes, which I ate in Amsterdam.

And I literally felt like I was being burned at the stake.

Yeah.

Oh, I've been there.

Yeah.

But Lement was not burned at the stake, to be clear.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I tried a space cake in Amsterdam because I went there when I was in 18 or something.

living in Germany.

I went to Amsterdam and we were like, let's go to a coffee shop and smoke marijuana.

So we went there like dumb kids.

And I was like, I'm so hungry.

And I saw this brownie and I was like, oh, it's funny.

They call it a space cake.

So I bought one of those and ate it.

And then my friend was like, oh, I want one too.

That looks awesome.

I was like, I'm not sharing.

So I bought one for him.

That was a really bad idea.

You probably should ask what's in things that you eat at places where they sell marijuana over the counter because I shoved that whole thing in my face.

And A few hours later, I remember telling my friend Hans, I can't go to the bathroom because I'm a penguin with a beach ball stuck between my legs.

And I was walking like that and I couldn't make it through the door of our room to get to the shared bathroom in the hostel that we were in.

And I remember just laying in my bed being like, should I just pee in my pants or should I try to make it to the bathroom?

And I made it finally to the bathroom and I got in back to the room and I go, Hans, man, I'm a penguin with a beach ball between my legs.

He's like, yeah, you said that.

And I go, I don't know if this is going to make any sense, but when the music stops, the vines go away from me.

And when the music bass comes in, the vines close in around me.

And he goes, bro, I know exactly what you mean.

And I was like, we are, we, that space cake had marijuana in it, didn't it?

There was something in there.

Yeah, I'm going to have one comment about your story because I've been to Amsterdam a bunch of times.

You know what they call Americans that come there and act like you?

Idiots?

Possibly as well.

That's called being amster damaged.

Oh, yeah, that's clever.

And it's so true.

We were surrounded by so many dumb college kids that were like falling asleep at the table they were at.

I remember talking to this guy next to me, and he was on a layover, and he bought a huge bag of weed, and he was trying to smoke all of it before he got back to the airport on his like five-hour layover.

And I remember the last thing he said before he passed out in a puddle of whatever he was drinking that he was missing getting into his mouth was, yeah, I'm going to Princeton.

Then he like fell asleep in a puddle of Coca-Cola.

That guy's probably a federal judge now.

Anyway, imagine being fined for teaching evolution.

These days, the only crime is skipping these mid-roll ads and missing out on sweet listener discounts.

Let's swing into an ad break.

We'll be right back.

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All right.

Now back to Skeptical Sunday.

LeMette didn't get burned to death, but he was a priest, right?

So maybe he had some connects that let him slide out of that one.

Okay, yes.

So LeMette found a way to separate his religious beliefs from his scientific inquiry.

He said, look, the Bible tells us why, science tells us how.

Sounds simple enough, but it didn't stop the fighting, though, right?

And I do love that he kind of wormed his way out.

Like, hey, no, no, no, I'm still on board the Bible.

Science is just explaining kind of how maybe all that went down, the stuff that's not in the footnotes.

Slick.

Good move.

I like it.

Yeah, but it did not stop the fighting.

As science kept uncovering how things work, shedding light on the mysteries of our world, religion kept pushing back, trying to maintain its authority and its monopoly over knowledge.

Fast forward to Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking book on the origin of species.

Also not exactly a popular guy or a popular book with hardcore fundamentalist religious folks, right?

The whole evolution thing?

No, I mean, to this day, they rail against Darwin.

And it wasn't exactly a popular book with a lot of people when it came out, including Darwin's wife, who was devoutly religious.

So Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, who never receives enough credit, but was simultaneously working on the same theory with Charles Darwin.

Right.

Wallace independently came up with basically the same theory, right?

Right.

Actually, it's a crazy story because Wallace, who had no idea Darwin was working on the same theory, sent an early draft of his work to Darwin for notes.

And Darwin got it and was like, dude.

Yeah.

That must have been kind of tricky because he has to go, I know you're going to think I'm copying your ideas, but I was thinking basically the same thing.

And you can tell the other guys, like, don't you dare take credit for my work.

He said, no, no, no, no, no, here are my notes.

Let me send you my notes so that we can compare.

Because I remember writing a paper in law school and I was like, Can I see yours for inspiration?

And then I was like, I hate to tell you this.

I'm using a lot of the exact same analogies.

And he was like, Give me my damn paper back because he thought I was copying his work.

But yeah, I can only imagine working on a great idea that will change the world.

And somebody sends you the same idea for notes.

And you're like, so are we both going to win the prize and be famous forever?

Or how's this going to work?

Yeah.

I mean, well, actually, how it did work, and to his credit, Darwin, who was far better known at the time, helped arrange for both he and Wallace's work to be read together at the Linnean Society of of London in July of 1858.

And they knew that this was going to be an explosive publication.

That was kind of a boss move of him instead of just taking all the credit and getting away with it because he could.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nice guy.

Was it also widely condemned, though, like Galileo's findings, where people are like, oh, these two troublemakers?

Well, yes, and no.

It was widely condemned by many religious groups, but it was also quite the sensation.

The first pressing of On the Origin of Species sold out on its first day.

People were super intrigued, and fellow scientists held the book up, not just for its revelations, but also for its methodical reasoning, extensive evidence, and avoidance of direct theological confrontations.

Interesting.

They were very careful to do that.

Avoidance of direct theological confrontations.

So Darwin consciously tried not to directly contradict religious belief from the sound of it.

Is that what you mean?

Let's put it this way.

He knew what the bombshell was, and he left it out of the book.

He left completely out of the book the origin of the human species altogether.

He just skipped it.

Didn't get into it.

Just left it out of the book.

Smart.

Yeah.

I have to say, of all species, humans really do seem like one of the easiest ones to figure out who we're related to because we look so much like primates, right?

Yeah.

I mean, we are primates, but like the ones that have hair all over their body.

Yeah.

I mean, that's true.

It's also asterisk.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Let me give you a quick aside, though, because I found this fascinating in my research.

An original pressing of on the origin of species was found in 2001.

This woman was cleaning out an attic and found it, and it had a stamp in it that it was taken out of the Boston Public Library in 1860.

No way.

And she returned it.

What?

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Incredibly valuable.

Like, I couldn't find an exact value, but easily six figures.

That's amazing.

So, can you imagine being the librarian that got that?

And it's like, how do I file this?

Let me talk to my manager.

And they're like, this is an international priceless artifact.

Yeah.

Basically, at this point, that's crazy.

And they charged her the late fee, too.

No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah.

The late fee unfortunately eclipsed the value of the book and she's homeless now.

Okay, so technical you're apes, but the religious objection that we came from monkeys is not a new one.

Let's cross the pond now from Darwin and Wallace in Britain to America.

Land of opportunity and also the land of banning science in schools.

Enter the Scopes monkey trial in 1925, Dayton, Tennessee.

It was a 24-year-old high school teacher, John Thomas Scopes, his crime, teaching evolution, Darwin style, which violated the Butler Act, a Tennessee law passed in 1925 that made it illegal for public school teachers to deny the divine creation of man.

Wow, that sounds so antiquated.

I mean, it is 100 years old, but the Butler Act really sounds like a violation of the Establishment Clause, which had been put into effect a couple hundred years prior.

So you're basically limiting my freedom of speech to favor a particular religious belief.

Doesn't that that steps on a few?

That steps on a few toes.

Yeah, well it actually didn't go too well for Scopes.

And let's be clear, this was a criminal offense teaching kids that humans evolved from apes.

And the trial became like just, it was a national spectacle.

A media circus.

They set up the court limbic stage.

People were selling monkey themed souvenirs out front of the courthouse.

The trial's like Coachella for creationists.

Wow.

Yeah.

So the ACLU obviously backed Scopes and three times presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan prosecuted.

It was literally the Bible versus biology in the American court system.

The big question being, should Christian religious beliefs dictate what is taught in science class?

And spoiler alert, the Bible won.

Scopes was convicted and fined.

But in the court of public opinion, the idea of science scored some serious points.

Newspapers like the New York Times called the trial a buffoonish farce.

In truth, though, when I really looked into it, it kind of boiled down to like a city versus rural divide.

City folks mocked the rural folks for their unscientific beliefs.

The whole thing echoes of like where we are today.

I was going to say, not much has changed, right?

That's sort of still happening.

Yeah.

And so people started waking up, though, particularly urban people started waking up to the fact that maybe just maybe teaching a 2,000-year-old text as scientific fact to the next generation of Americans was maybe a little sketchy.

And unconstitutional, right?

Public opinion may have shifted, but I'm looking at the Butler Act.

That was on the books until 1967.

So it's not like they took swift action after this to remedy the situation.

No, that's right.

Decades of legal, state-sponsored science denial, mandated biblical biology.

So the Supreme Court eventually said, no, you can't ban teaching evolution in schools, which seems like a big win for science.

I mean, it took forever, but whatever.

Right, that's right.

Although the Supreme Court actually never took up the Butler Act, it made its way up to the court and they declined to take that particular case.

But in 1968, it ruled on a similar law in Epperson v.

Arkansas, ruling bans on the teaching of evolution violated, again, the Establishment Clause, ending the battle between fundamentalist religious views and science forever.

Of course, I'm kidding.

Yeah.

It was by no means over.

Creationism just evolved.

I see what you did there.

Creationism evolved.

Nice one.

Yeah.

Okay, so having met its state in court, creationism evolved into creation science.

It attempts to reinterpret science so that it fits into a more literal interpretation of the Bible, still rejecting evolution and the Big Bang theory, of course.

At least they're not burning people alive anymore, kind of maybe.

At least not around here.

We've come a long way, baby.

So creation science takes over where creationism left off.

But what's the difference?

Yeah, it took over and it did a pretty good job.

Many school boards and lawmakers are persuaded to include the teachings of creation science alongside evolution in the classroom.

In fact, Arkansas even adopts a law known as the Balanced Treatment for Creation Science and Evolution Science Act.

Wow.

Act 590 for short.

A law that mandated public schools give balanced treatment to creation science and evolution science in the classroom.

So teachers were mandated by law to present both of these things as equally plausible explanations?

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, more or less.

Creationism was back in business.

Wow.

But.

Not for long.

Supreme Court once again weighs in and rules in 1987 that the Arkansas law is unconstitutional and again, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, since it was specifically intended, as you said, to advance a particular religion.

But have no fear, because creationism evolves again, this time into the even sexier brand of intelligent design.

Ah, so this is what my ex-girlfriend was always talking about, intelligent design.

She explained it to me.

a lot, but it kind of all comes back to God designing everything, right?

No evolution.

Yeah.

And again, they did evolve in their views a little bit with intelligent design.

Intelligent design doesn't contest the prevailing scientific view on the age of the earth.

I see.

That's big of them.

But many, many fundamentalist religious folks, Christians, whatever, do still contest the prevailing scientific view on the age of the earth, right?

I mean, the young earth creationists that we were just talking about.

Oh, it's huge.

And we're going to get into that.

I mean, heck, there are Christians out there these days.

This is true.

I know you know this, that not only contest the age of the earth, they contest the edge of the earth.

Yes, flat earthers.

I didn't know that was a fundamentalist Christian thing, though.

I thought that was a sort of like terminally online, I want to be contrarian because I'm on Reddit all day kind of thing.

Well, no, I mean, it, it's, it is a biblical view of the earth, particularly with their view of the firmament, which the Bible talks about in Genesis, right?

Dome over the earth.

And like flat earthers think outer space is imaginary and the sun is local.

You're right.

I've heard of the firmament and above that are angels, right?

But the firmament is the snow globe around the top part of the earth that has lights on it that look like stars, basically.

That was kind of their theory.

You know, I've not gotten too deep into flat earth, but I will say that it's kind of an opposite of a snow globe because they think that the water is above the glass instead of in the glass.

Like, at least that's what the Bible says.

It talks of the waters above and the waters below.

And flat earthers and people that believe in the firmament think that there's...

outer space as water or that it's imaginary and it's fake.

And you know what?

Maybe we should do an episode on stuff like that.

Maybe.

Okay, continue.

But they are out there and they are almost all certainly fundamentalist Christians.

But whereas flat earthers are usually laughed at, like you said, the proponents of intelligent design, well, they take themselves very seriously and have serious credentials.

I mean, some of these people have PhDs, and at the end of the day, it's proven to be little more than religion in a lab coat.

But this is a serious effort to undermine the teaching of evolution.

Now, time to pray at the altar of capitalism.

We'll be right back.

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Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday.

So to be clear, intelligent design proponents are not arguing that life all started in a garden with a naked man and a naked woman and a talking snake, right?

This is sort of beyond that.

No, no, no.

But they do argue that evolution does not sufficiently explain the complexity of life on Earth and that science should recognize the existence of an intelligent designer.

AKA God, right?

Right.

I mean, and they're careful not to use that word.

That's why they call it an intelligent designer.

But groups like the Discovery Institute have led campaigns here in America trying to discredit evolution as it's taught currently, with their stated goals being to defeat scientific materialism and replace it with the theistic understanding that nature and humans are created by, well, they say an intelligent designer, but they're all Christians.

So let's be honest, God.

Okay.

Yeah.

The whole notion revolves around something called irreducible complexity.

What does that mean exactly?

Okay, so irreducible complexity is a term popularized by a guy by the name of Michael Bahey.

He's a biochemist and prominent figure in the intelligent design movement.

In 1996, he published a book called Darwin's Black Box.

In it, he claimed that some biological systems are so complex and interdependent that they could not function if any part were removed.

Therefore, they couldn't have evolved step by step via natural selection because they wouldn't have worked until fully formed.

Okay, I'm following.

So all parts of life, nature, earth, are necessary for function.

Remove one, and the whole thing stops working.

Therefore, it couldn't have evolved gradually.

It must have been designed.

They have a favorite example.

Let me tell you about it.

It's called the bacterial flagellum.

And this is a microscopic rotary motor.

It's on a tiny little microscopic flagellum.

And it does look like a little spinning motor.

And it's made up of about 30 protein parts.

And if any one of these parts is taken out, the motor won't spin.

Therefore, they claim it couldn't have evolved piece by piece.

Honestly, I can follow that logic so far, right?

It couldn't have evolved piece by piece, but there are other ways things end up in nature.

Behe himself, who's the key proponent for this, he likes to use the example of a mousetrap.

A mousetrap consists of five parts, a base, a spring, a hammer, a catch, and a holding bar.

Without any one of these, the mousetrap doesn't work.

So the notion goes like this.

Why would evolution develop a spring?

when it would take another million years to add on the hammer or the holding bar.

Right.

Now I'm seeing.

So the fact that these things all do exist, to them, indicates there was a designer who could see see the end result from the beginning and then work towards that.

Right.

Behe's argument hinges on the idea that if we can't currently explain it, it must be a designer.

That is what we call in the biz the God of the gaps argument.

He's saying that because I don't understand it, must be God, adding a supernatural explanation wherever science hasn't fully mapped things out yet.

And in the case of irreducible complexity, scientists actually can explain it.

It's not a big mystery.

It turns out that systems evolved through co-option.

That is to say, structures evolve for one purpose and then are repurposed for another.

Yeah.

I was trying to think of a good example of this and I came up with the most basic example.

When I was a kid, I loved it when my mom used the last paper towel because I would repurpose the empty paper towel roll into a kick-ass toodler.

I'd run around the house toodling.

I was possibly a very annoying kid.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you're an annoying adult too.

So that really, that does track.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So, well, evolution can do the same thing.

Something a biological being uses for one purpose can slowly over time be repurposed for something else.

So this brings us to the Kitz Miller v.

Dover case in 2005.

A group of 11 parents in Pennsylvania sued the Dover Area School District over the school board's requirement that intelligent design be presented as an explanation.

for the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.

Effectively, once again, teaching creationism to ninth grade public school students.

Yeah, that sounds like the Tennessee monkey trial all over again, right?

Yeah.

And again, in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents.

They ruled that intelligent design was a form of creationism and violated that pesky establishment cause of the First Amendment to the Constitution again, the one that prohibits, as we said, the government from favoring one religion over another.

For the record, if you remember back to that era, George W.

Bush was running for re-election at that time, and he was running on a platform of teach the controversy.

Again, saying, like going back to that Arkansas law, teach both, except there was no controversy.

Evolutionary biologists were entirely against intelligent design.

There was no controversy.

There's all science on one side and Christians on the other.

But with the president of the United States on their side, you see how powerful of an ally they had.

Yeah, so the Supreme Court steps in once again in favor of science, but the fight continues.

Why does it have to be this way?

Why all the bickering?

I mean, you can teach what you want in church, right?

You don't have to do it in school.

The question of why does it have to be like this kind of breaks down to this.

Science asks for evidence and religion runs on faith.

And a religious person will tell you that it's all about faith.

They're built on different foundations.

And while they don't have to clash, they often do, especially when faith wants to shape public policy, education, or health.

It's one thing to believe Noah built a boat.

It's another thing to rewrite our biology and geology textbooks to include it as literal history.

It's all about how truth is defined.

In religion, truth is revealed.

In science, it's tested.

Faith is immutable.

Science evolves.

In science, new data equals new conclusions.

And with most faiths, new data is made to fit the original conclusions.

Exactly.

Every time somebody tries to argue with me by pointing out that science has gotten things wrong, I always point out that it was more science and better science that corrected the bad science.

Not religion.

It's never been religion that corrected the science.

And this tension between faith and science, it's not just anecdotal.

There's actually data, hard, peer-reviewed data.

A study published in 2018 looked at over 9,000 people across four data sets.

They found that higher levels of religiosity measured not just by affiliation, but actual belief and practice, were linked to lower science literacy and more negative attitudes towards science.

And get this, in one part of the study, a parent's religiosity predicted their kids' attitudes towards science 20 years later.

So two decades of scientific side eye.

That's a long grudge, man.

Yeah, and now that study shows correlation, not causation.

So it doesn't necessarily prove that religion makes you anti-science, but it definitely suggests a long-term influence.

Yeah, it's a strong suggestion, I would say, just anecdotally.

Yeah.

And while we might not be fighting in court over teaching evolution, although who's to say what tomorrow will bring, the battle between American Christians and the scientific community has certainly not subsided.

What about the COVID-19 pandemic?

Nothing like a pandemic to reveal just how deep the science divide runs, especially in this country.

Right.

And boy, are we opening a can of worms on that one.

But vaccines, masks, social distancing, all backed by science, and yet many American Christians, particularly evangelicals, said no thanks, especially white evangelicals who had the lowest vaccination rates of any religious group in the U.S.

Okay, but I know plenty of non-religious people that also think that the pandemic was a hoax or vaccines were not necessary or bad for you or some kind of trick.

Yeah, or that they have microchips in them.

Or that they have microchips in them.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And that gets to why this is all part of the same problem, believing things because of bad or non-existent evidence.

Like the Revelation crowd, that is to say, the Christians who look to the book of Revelation and the Bible and its prophecies about end times.

Many of these pastors said that the vaccine was conditioning people to accept the mark of the beast.

I remember hearing that, seeing that, reading that on Twitter.

Insert joke here about the needle jab being so small, I can't even find it, right?

But that I never really understood.

Conditioning people to accept the mark of the beast.

I mean, I even remember going, okay, is that a euphemism?

Explain this to me.

And it was just quite literally some kind of crazy nonsense, if I can say that here.

Right.

Well, it's in the book of Revelation and it's the mark of the beast.

I had a guy not long ago telling me that the mark of the beast was here.

And it was some sort of barcode that was going to be tattooed or somehow put on you or something like that.

And I looked it up and he's like, no, it's real.

They're working on it.

I looked at it.

I was like, dude, that was 15 years ago and they abandoned it.

It didn't like it's anyway, but they see the mark of the beast everywhere.

I mean, you know, there's the old saying, when you're a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.

So, I mean, I think there's some of that going on here.

But you also had pastors preaching against vaccines from the pulpit.

And it's not just COVID in the modern era.

Fundamentalist Christians often oppose climate change.

Scientists are pretty firm on this.

And this is just a fact.

I honestly don't know why this is controversial.

The planet is heating up.

Ice caps are melting.

Extreme weather is increasing.

And humans are causing it.

Many Christian leaders still say, God is in control.

We don't need to worry.

Or my personal favorite, the earth is ours to use.

God gave it to us.

That's called dominion theology.

So that's just kind of like an offshoot of Christianity saying, hey, the Bible said, drilleth, baby, drilleth.

Is that what that is?

Yeah, it was specifically Genes 1.28, fill the earth and subdue it.

Wow, is that real?

What does that mean?

I think that's kind of bizarre.

Yes.

And let me be clear, I have no problem.

with somebody preaching that from the pulpit if that's the way they feel and their congregation wants to hear it.

It's when these beliefs based on faith end up in our politics and our policies, it becomes very dangerous.

I mean, right now, the EPA has decided to not only stop monitoring emissions, but they've removed a study from the EPA that showed that CO2 is harmful to human health and that it heats up the earth.

So, I mean, where do you think that's coming from?

Yeah, that's interesting.

So, do you think religion has no place in politics and policy?

I'm going to kind of guess that you're on the same page as separation of church and state as maybe I am.

Yeah, I absolutely do think that.

And I've been very front about the fact that I'm an atheist.

You can just ask all my Christian friends because I have a lot of Christians in my life and their favorite subject is Michael is not coming to heaven with us,

which gets me actually to the waiting for the rapture crowd who espouse a form of eschatological fatalism.

Wow, those are some big words, Michael.

Tell us what they mean.

It's a fancy way of saying, why fix the planet if the rapture is around the corner?

So it's kind of like the earth is the apartment we're all moving out of next month and we know the landlord's just going to keep our security deposit anyway.

So we have a big party.

That's actually really funny, but having been in that situation a few times back in my rock band days, I really hope we treat the earth better than me and my friends treated that apartment.

Look, this denial goes beyond just what the Bible explicitly says.

Like the earth was created in six days and on the seventh day, God Netflixed and chilled or whatever.

The Bible doesn't say anything about stem cells because the Bible doesn't know anything about cells.

But in America, which the Bible also doesn't know anything about in the 21st century, stem cell research was certainly hampered by Christians who believed that stem cells had souls.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I remember this was such a big deal under George W.

Bush.

And I think they had to open up labs to study these things in the Caribbean or something like that.

They had to offshore this.

Yeah, you're 100% right.

And it was under George W.

Bush.

Again, under pressure from Christian conservatives, he banned federal funding for any embryonic stem cell research that used newly created embryos.

Only research using already existing lines was allowed, which kind of limited progress.

This discouraged scientists, blocked funding, and slowed innovation in the U.S.

compared to other countries with more permissive policies.

I'll take this opportunity now to throw a little shade at my former religion, Catholicism.

We mentioned at the beginning that Catholics have been pretty good with education and science.

Well, not when it came to stem cells.

They were very, very bad.

The Catholic Church Church has been a big obstacle to stem cell research.

I thought the new Pope was all kind of like hip now.

You think maybe he'll change course?

Well, I hope the new Pope can cope with stem cells, but unfortunately, opposition to stem cell research has hampered progress in treating stuff like Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, and diabetes.

And in some ways, religion isn't just standing in the way of solutions to real problems.

They are also creating problems where there was no problems, such as, I'm sure everyone saw this one coming, a person being gay.

Look, your religious beliefs about homosexuality are your own, and I'm not going to get into it, but your religious beliefs about psychology and the ability to convert a gay person into a heterosexual person through conversion therapy, that does real harm.

Is this the whole pray the gay away stuff that you're talking about?

Yeah, or more accurately, psychological abuse.

So for decades, Christian ministries and counselors have offered programs to cure homosexuality or correct gender identity, and it's not based in science.

In fact, every major psychological and medical association has condemned it, from the APA to the WHO.

The science is really clear on this.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are not disorders.

They're normal variations of human experience.

I don't think that's woke.

I think that's kind of settled here.

But I don't know, maybe it is, but I'm pretty sure that that's the majority.

here on this aside from extreme religious folks.

Yeah.

Right, for sure.

And let's be clear here, you know, conservatives in America have really come around on the gay thing.

And the younger generation of many Christians I've seen have come around on the gay issue as well.

But for some religious communities, the truth is inconvenient.

So they treat it like a sin or worse, like a sickness.

Instead of compassion, they offer coercion.

Instead of affirmation, they offer aversion therapy, shame cycles, and trauma.

Sometimes it's subtle, like church-based counseling that tries to reframe desire as temptation.

Other times it's extreme, like isolation, emotional abuse, even physical punishment.

And the damage can be long-lasting, depression, anxiety, PTSD, increased suicide risk, especially for young people.

We've gotten letters from guys who have gay thoughts and attraction, but they choose to ignore them by praying harder or marrying a woman or something like that.

It's actually quite sad for everyone involved.

And yet, despite the science, these gay conversion programs, they still exist.

I looked recently and it's very hard to believe.

I'm shocked that this is still around.

Yeah, especially in deeply religious areas, conversion therapy clinics and camps have just gone underground.

They've rebranded, they've renamed, but they're still operating.

It's a classic example of faith rejecting fact, choosing dogma over data, and people suffer for it.

You can't pray someone straight.

You can't shock the gay out.

And you definitely can't claim to love someone, telling them their existence is broken.

Yeah, so here's the big question.

Where do we draw the line between religious belief and scientific responsibility?

Because people are free to believe whatever they want.

Yeah, go for it.

Believe the earth is 6,000 years old.

Believe Jesus wrote a dinosaur.

Sorry, I'm being snarky.

Whatever.

But when the beliefs start dictating laws, public health, and education policy, that's where it gets messy.

It's one thing to opt out of a flu shot.

It's another to influence thousands to reject medicine during a global pandemic or vote for politicians who gut climate policy because God promised not to flood the earth again.

But he didn't promise not to roast us.

Maybe God thinks like a lawyer and he's going to take those literally.

I don't know.

Yeah, well, we know you think like a lawyer.

That's an amazing take on it.

Look, faith isn't necessarily the problem, but when faith refuses to engage with evidence and instead doubles down on fear and fantasy, it's just, it's straight up dangerous.

You can have your own beliefs, but not your own facts.

That's a common refrain on this show as well.

Yeah.

It's not science that's the enemy.

It's the fear of science or of what it reveals, what it challenges.

It's easier to say, God made you wrong.

Let's fix it than to confront a worldview that might be flawed.

So is there any hope?

Can religion and science ever kind of be friends?

You know, they had been before, like our old pal, Georges Lamette, the cosmic egg guy, or Francis Collins, the former head of the Human Genome Project.

That guy was a devout Christian as well.

I mean, then he was studying DNA and all that stuff.

Yeah, no, he's, I mean, he did groundbreaking work and he is devoutly religious.

Right.

There are plenty of scientists who believe in God, who see science as a way to understand creation, not replace it.

It requires letting go of literalism, taking the Bible as metaphor, not a manual.

And that's the big ask.

For some fundamentalist believers, the Bible isn't open to interpretation.

It's the final word.

And for scientists, that just doesn't fly.

At the end of the day, science isn't perfect, but it's rooted in facts and itself corrects.

It proves itself wrong all the time.

And it's okay with that.

And religion isn't always the bad guy, but it's clearly resistant to change and hesitant to correct itself as well.

Yeah.

The minute faith starts telling you not to trust science, that's a red flag in my book.

or a scarlet letter.

If your beliefs are hurting people, denying medicine, denying rights, denying facts, then we've got a problem.

Truth shouldn't fear investigation.

God, if he does exist, shouldn't need protection from telescopes or test tubes.

And maybe don't burn people alive for believing differently.

Amen, Jordan.

Amen.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

Topic suggestions and angry emails, which I'm sure no one is going to write about this episode to me directly, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com.

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Our advice and opinions are our own.

And yes, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

Also, we do try to get things right in these episodes.

Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked.

So consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being.

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Share the show with those you love.

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In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.

What if the real gender gap no one's talking about is the one where men are falling way behind?

I sit down with Richard Reeves to unpack why guys are struggling.

What's happening with our guys now, so many of our young

Like, so many people just don't even want to confront the fact that this could be an area where we should be more worried about men than women.

They just can't do that because they think politically that's not acceptable and that's just got us into a horrible position.

Too many people, even now struggle to admit that men are having problems because they think men are the problem and until we get past that we're just going to keep losing these men.

There's an old traditional saying which is women need to hear that they're loved and men need to hear that they're respected.

I'm going to say there's a grain of truth to that.

I do not want to stereotype, I do not want to say it's true of everybody and as a society that's how we have to think about this.

It's and, not all.

And right now, too much of our politics, especially around gender, is being framed as all, pick a side, pink or blue.

Insane.

And it's got us to a very difficult place in our culture.

And so we've just all got to give ourselves permission to care about boys and men without living in fear of the fact that in doing that, we've somehow gone over to the dark side and become a misogynist.

That is not true.

And it's more of us that say that, the less true it will become.

For more on what it really takes to help men thrive without setting women back, check out episode 1126 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

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Personally, I actually toss it in my coffee.

I know that sounds weird, but it doesn't taste like anything.

It just, if it's not simple, it's not happening for me.

It just goes right in.

They've even got these convenient stick packs for when you're traveling or running around this summer.

Bottom line, if you want to stay active, look good, keep doing the things you love, give vital proteins a shot.

It's an effortless addition to your routine.

And the key is, of course, consistency.

Get 20% off by going to vitalproteins.com.

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.